Hydrocyclone or cyclone separators have experienced an ever increasing use in a variety of industries for an even wider variety of purposes. In the oil industry, drilling fluid is circulated down through the drill pipe, out the drill bit and upwardly back to the surface along the sides of the bore. Circulation of drilling fluid cools the bit while carrying drilled cuttings away from the bit to the surface. Before recirculation of used drilling fluid laden with cuttings down through the bore, the fluid is first circulated through a series of cyclone separators commonly connected in parallel by means of a manifold to form a desilter.
Desilters cleanse the drilling fluid by rapidly circulating the fluid through each cyclone separator. Due to a swirling action of the fluid within the separator, heavier particles such as drill cuttings fall out through a discharge at the bottom of the cyclone, while the cleansed fluid escapes through the top of the cyclone to be recirculated through the drill hole.
It has long been known that the diameter of the cyclone separator regulates the size of the particulate matter which will be expelled through the bottom of the separator. Large diameter cyclone separators discharge large cuttings but allow very fine particles to pass uninhibited through the top of the separator with the drilling fluid. Cleansing the drilling fluid of such fine particles thus require cyclone separators of substantially smaller diameter.
Separators of reduced diameters however are characterized by substantially smaller feed and discharge tubes communicating with interior of the cyclone. Thus up to now, it has been necessary to either change the entire desilter unit or at least the manifold within the unit when cyclone separators of lesser diameters, not accommodated by the manifold, were needed to effect removal of very fine particles.
From U.S. Pat. No. 3,959,150, it is known in the art to provide three pairs of two-piece telescoping connectors for facilitating the quick interchange of cyclone separators in cellulose and paper plants using similarly sized cyclones in each of a plurality of desilter systems. The patentee states that the conventional methods of connecting individual cyclones by hoses and hose clips are time consuming and costly and are further dangerous, due to the potential for hoses to break and thereby release often hot fluid under pressure into the working environment. Although the U.S. Pat. No. 3,959,150 patent adds a set of multielement connectors and sealing members for facilitating quick interchange of cyclone separators having like diameters, a need has remained in the art for a set of single piece adaptor members that permit the free interchange of cyclone separators of any desired diameter with a manifold having conduits of invariant diameters.